


Light

by Resonant



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: First Time, M/M, Romance, Senses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-10-15
Updated: 1999-10-15
Packaged: 2017-10-11 11:39:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/112037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Resonant/pseuds/Resonant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blair brings home some stained-glass windows. Jim looks at the windows. Blair looks at Jim.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Light

**Author's Note:**

> This story is old and no longer under warranty.

"Hey, Chief, they were all out of rye, but I did get some good pumpernick -- what the hell?" The door swung shut behind Jim as he stopped, arms full of grocery bags, blinking at the transformation as the blue-green glow resolved itself into ordinary late-morning light filtered through ... 

"Stained glass," Blair said, taking the bags out of his hands and carrying them to the kitchen. "Tomorrow's Marta's birthday, and Susannah wanted them to be a surprise, so she needed a place to leave them overnight. Aren't they beautiful?" 

Jim wandered into the living room and stood in front of one of the door-sized panels leaning on the French doors. His fingers hovered over the surface of the glass without touching it. "How on earth did you get them up here without breaking them?" 

"They're not as fragile as you might think, and they're damned heavy, too." Blair put the last carton of milk in the refrigerator and joined Jim in the living room. "You don't mind, do you, Jim? It's only overnight, and she'll be back to pick them up in the morning. It's just that everybody else she knew was in a dorm room or a student apartment or something and I was the only person with the space to spread them out, you know --" 

"No, I don't mind," Jim said distantly. "They're amazing." He stepped back far enough to take in the entire image -- "Are those mermaids?" 

"Yeah, it's a whole undersea series, merfolk and castles and sea monsters and stuff. They had some other ones that were really incredible, too -- you know the Briar Rose fairy tale? Sleeping Beauty? They've got a series from inside the castle when the roses grow over it, and the leading is all spiny with thorns. It's amazing, man, just astonishing. You look at them and you feel, like, smothered in green." 

"I never saw stained glass outside a church." Jim walked closer again. "I can see the little bubbles in the glass ..." 

Alarmed, Blair put a hand on Jim's arm, but Jim grinned at him. "I'm not zoning, Chief, don't worry. Just appreciating this." He moved on to another panel. "Wow," he breathed. "There's a surface texture in this one. It looks like ... raindrops or something. And if I shift focus a little bit, I can see swirls in the color." 

"Shift focus? What's that like for you?" 

"Hard to describe," Jim said. "Like trying to remember what it was like not to be able to walk ..." He shook his head. "You know how when you're in a car you can switch from looking _through _the glass to looking _at _the glass? It's like that. I can look at the pattern on the surface, and if I look close enough I start to see it as almost a geography, like I could be down in it, walking through those hills and valleys. Or I can look a little deeper and see the bubbles in the glass, the swirls where the color is deeper ... then it's like I'm swimming in the color." 

He was frowning now in deep concentration. "If I get close enough, those bubbles look _huge, _like something I could step into and be surrounded by that color on all sides. God, Chief, I think if I looked close enough I could actually see it all at molecule level." He snapped upright suddenly. "Now I really _am _skirting a zone. I'd better back off." 

"That must be frustrating for you, man, never being able to look your fill." 

Jim had an odd look. "Yeah," he said, and went in search of the toolbox. 

Jim was normally almost annoyingly energetic on weekends, and he had begun this one with a long list of projects for the loft, so Blair was surprised to see him drifting indecisively, heading off to the bathroom with a wrench in his hand only to be drawn irresistibly back into the room full of blue light. The third time Blair looked up and found him standing in front of the couch, moving restlessly from one sock-clad foot to the other, he set his laptop aside. "Jim, if it's really bothering you, I can find somebody else who can take them." 

"Oh." Jim looked at him like a man awakened from a dream. "No, you don't need to do that. They're not _bothering _me exactly." He took a deep breath. "Chief, is what you're doing really critical there? Or could you, I mean, if you're not too busy ..." 

"What is it you need?" 

"I want to look at this glass, really look at it. But I'm ... I don't want to zone." 

"You need me to spot you? Sure, man, happy to do it -- on one condition." At Jim's sharp glance, he held up his hands in a warding-off gesture. "Nothing deep. I just want you to tell me what you see. Tell me everything you can about what it's like for you, either while it's happening or afterwards. I want to know everything." 

"Yeah, OK." Jim took a step toward the couch, then stood there with an expectant look until Blair got the message. 

"Oh, you mean right now. OK, man, give me a minute. Might as well get comfortable if we're in this for the long haul. Bathroom, drinks, that kind of thing." 

When he returned, balancing a precarious stack of dishware, Jim was still standing there, almost floating, as though afraid to light in any one place. "Jeez, relax!" Blair said, handing him a sandwich, a soda and a coaster. "I'm going to look after you. You'll be fine." He toed off his shoes, set his own glass and plate on the table, and put a couple of magazines down beside it. "Light reading," he said reassuringly. "Nothing that will take too much concentration." 

Jim nodded. Sat down. Swallowed. "You know what this feels like?" he said softly. "Like you've tied a rope around me and you're lowering me into the water." 

Well, that explained the tension. "Hey, man, don't worry," he said gently. "I know what a zone looks like by now. You don't even have to tug on the rope." Jim gave him a grateful look and finally settled back. 

It was strange, sitting on the couch and looking at his roommate looking at the stained glass. In the early morning hours, the sun had come through the balcony windows and cast blue and green shapes across the living room, but now the effect was more subtle. As the hours went by and the sunlight shifted, the color of the room went through small changes until Blair really did feel like he was under water. Jim was still, concentrating deeply, but each time Blair began to worry about a zone, Jim would begin to speak -- slowly, almost as though he was talking in his sleep. 

"The glass isn't all the same thickness. There are little variations. It's like ... it almost has a temperature. Thin blue glass is cool, but the thicker parts are like a vein of chill." 

Blair finished his sandwich, and his chips, and his Red Zinger tea. After a brief hesitation, he started in on Jim's chips. 

"The artist must have been handling the metal while it was hot. He ... no, she, the hands are too small for a man ... she left fingerprints in it. I can tell where the trouble spots were, which parts she had difficulty with, where the clusters of fingerprints are. It's like looking down at mountains from an airplane." 

Blair opened a magazine, but it sat unread on his lap. 

"Regular glass is molded to be the shape it is, but this glass must be _broken _into those shapes. I can see how sharp it is where it meets the metal part. _Incredibly _sharp -- there's a gap in the metal over there and I can follow the glass down, and down, and down. God, Chief, this close up the blade of a knife would look like the tip of a screwdriver, but the glass is sharp right down to the limits of my vision." 

Finally Blair let the magazine slide to the floor and gave up all pretense of looking at anything but Jim. In the silence, as the day slid down toward evening and the loft darkened, the room felt like it was outside ordinary time, like a cool bubble of silence and safety where he could drop all his fears and look his fill. 

He catalogued the familiar face, the familiar body -- the narrowed cowboy eyes, forever searching the far horizon; the notch between the eyebrows; the grave concentration and almost preternatural stillness of a man who had made focus into an art form. The hands curled lightly on the denim-clad thighs, the fine-boned wrists. The pulse at the base of the throat. The broad, strong shoulders. The whole weight of the city rests on those shoulders, Blair thought -- and then, No. He and I shoulder that weight together. 

And there it was, suddenly, the reason why they both saw the attraction between them but let it lie, the reason why they touched but never connected, the reason why a curious small distance always remained between them, no matter how far they traveled toward each other. Because we carry that weight the way a railroad track does, Blair thought. Close, but not too close, and traveling together but never meeting. In the melancholy evening light the thought filled him with a sadness almost too deep to bear. 

And perhaps Jim felt it, too, because he withdrew his eyes from whatever mystery he saw at the heart of the glass and turned his gaze on Blair and held out a hand. "Dive's over, buddy," he said hoarsely. "Pull me out." 

Blair looked at the extended hand, and thought wildly, But what if all along we've had the wrong metaphor? What if we're not a railroad track at all, but a rope? What if we could be strong not through distance but through closeness, each one lending the other strength? Can we carry the weight that way? 

He gripped Jim's hand, and he felt the truth of it in that simple connection. And he wanted to communicate it to Jim, somehow, that it was safe, that they could touch across this distance, so he wrapped Jim's hand in his other hand too. A snatch of song unreeled in Blair's head (who took my two hands and made them four?) and then Jim was with him, reading the meaning of the gesture, never breaking their gaze as he slowly brought up his other hand. 

"Yes," Blair said. "Yes, we can." And then he knelt up over their clasped hands and kissed his friend's mouth. 

Jim drew a harsh breath and then pressed into his mouth, deeply, deeply, as though what Blair was offering wasn't touch but oxygen. Tongue on his lips, teeth under his tongue, hands wrapped tightly around his hands. Yes, Blair thought wildly. We can. It's heavy, it's heavy, but together we can make it light. 

A pause, a breath, and Jim was murmuring against his mouth, "Why can we?" 

"Because," Blair said, not altogether coherently, "we're a rope and not a railroad track." And then he almost laughed at the familiar expressions crossing Jim's face: confusion, amusement, acceptance, peace. 

He released Jim's hands and pushed him back against the back of the couch and straddled his hips and kissed and kissed him. Jim's hands came around him, holding him close, then let go to pull his T-shirt out of his jeans and push up under it and stroke over his bare skin, and Blair broke the kiss and reared his head back, gasping, and Jim lifted up off the couch and licked at his throat, bit gently where his neck met his shoulder, ran his tongue as far down Blair's chest as the neck of his T-shirt would let him, until Blair reached behind him and hauled the shirt off with one hand. 

Blair moved to resume the kiss, but Jim's hands on his shoulders stopped him, and then, understanding, he sat still and let Jim look at him the way he'd been looking at the glass -- the way Blair had been looking at him. Blair could see Jim's eyes catalog his hair fallen forward onto his flushed cheeks, and his wet mouth, and his naked chest. And Jim shut his eyes and pulled Blair forward into a tight embrace, rubbing his cheek against Blair's hair. 

"Chief," he whispered, "it scares me." 

"What does, Jim?" Blair asked against the side of his head. 

"Whatever deep water I get myself into, you're always on the boat to pull me up," he said. "If we go in together, how will we get out?" 

Blair lifted his head and looked down into his friend's eyes. "Jim," he said with quiet assurance, "if we go in together, we can breathe down there. If we go in together, we don't _have _to come out." And he could see the simple belief in Jim's eyes, and it shook him to the bone. (The way he trusts me. Natural as breathing.) And then they were kissing again, and all his words flew away as the world narrowed down to two mouths, two bodies, two heartbeats. 

Jim's hands were in Blair's hair, holding his head steady, and Blair turned his head and licked Jim's wrist, bit at the base of his thumb, and moved up his inner arm, licking and biting and sucking. He pushed up the sleeve of Jim's T-shirt and licked along the hollow at the inside of his shoulder, and Jim shuddered and pushed him back long enough to pull off the shirt -- and then pulled him back, hard, pressing his head back down, and Blair laughed softly and pressed his face into Jim's armpit, teasing the sparse hair with his fingers and licking the smooth skin, detouring down along Jim's ribs before coming back up to tease his nipple. And Jim's hips were pushing up at him now, so without removing his mouth he pushed both hands down between them, trusting Jim's hands on his shoulders to keep him from falling, and cupped Jim's denim-clad cock and rubbed hard with the heels of his hands. 

The sound Jim made then was rough, desperate, and Blair felt a tug on his hair and raised his head and Jim growled, "Get these fucking clothes _off,"_ and Blair licked wetly across his mouth and then stood up, undoing his fly buttons with one hand, impatiently using his feet to push his jeans the rest of the way off. 

When he looked up, Jim was lying back against the couch back, lifting his hips to push off jeans and boxers together, and he was panting, and hard, and so beautiful that Blair's eyes fell shut for a moment. Without waiting for Jim to get the jeans the rest of the way off, Blair shoved back the coffee table and sank to his knees and took Jim's wet cock into his wet mouth. 

"Oh god," Jim said, and then: "Blair," and then nothing for a long time, and then: "Blair. Not that way." 

Blair let Jim's cock slip from his mouth and rubbed his cheek against it briefly, and tugged Jim's jeans the rest of the way off, and then he pushed up to the couch beside him and leaned his forehead against Jim's. "What do you want?" he whispered against Jim's temple. 

"You," Jim said, pushing back Blair's hair and licking his ear. Blair shivered. 

"How?" he said. And Jim took a deep breath and held it, and suddenly Blair knew what he couldn't ask for. "Yes," he said. "I can give you that. I can look after you, Jim, I can take care of you. Let me." And felt Jim sigh, half lust and half relief, and turn his open mouth onto Blair's for a long kiss. 

Naked, skin to skin, and doing nothing but kissing -- it went quickly from pleasure to torment. Blair pushed back and said, "We ..." and his voice cracked so that he had to try again: "We need ..." and at the same time Jim said, "I've got ..." and Blair grinned and said, "Mine's closer," and bolted for his room before Jim could finish his sentence, finding the tube by feel without turning the light on. 

He came to a dead stop in the doorway. Jim had slid down to sit on the floor, weight on one hip, one arm on the couch with his head propped on his hand, the other hand rubbing up and down his thigh, cock hard and smearing a shiny wet patch on his belly. At Blair's small noise of distress, he frowned: "What?" and Blair said, "You look ... you look like ..." and then words defeated him and he flung himself down on the floor beside Jim, kissing any bit of skin he could get his mouth on until Jim turned and knelt up, arms on the couch, and Blair swallowed and said, "Now?" and Jim said, "Now. Yes." 

So Blair clambered over Jim so he could have the use of his right hand, and he dropped the tube, and got it open, and dropped it again, and Jim was patient, but Blair could feel his eagerness in the tension of the long back muscles under his hands. No time to tease, not now, so Blair took a gamble on Jim's readiness and went in fast with two wet fingers, and Jim's back arched and a low, thrilling sound came out of his throat and he pushed back as Blair began to scissor his fingers and he said, "Now. God, don't make me wait. Now," and Blair had to look away from the little movements of Jim's hips as Jim rubbed himself against the couch, too eager to wait while Blair pulled his fingers out and slicked up and tapped Jim's legs further apart with his knee and pressed slowly but inexorably into that wet-velvet heat. 

He rested there, listening to Jim breathing shallowly, and then he wiped his slippery hands on his own thighs and slid them slowly up Jim's ribs, down his arms where he braced himself on his elbows, and back up to his hands, intertwining their fingers. Jim clutched his hands and whispered, so softly that Blair could barely hear him: "Deep. I want it deep. Hard." 

"Oh _god."_ And Blair closed his eyes and bent all his concentration to beating back his own rising pleasure long enough to give Jim what he asked for. Long breath, and then he was pulling nearly all the way out, and Jim's fingers were tightening on his, and he plunged smoothly back in, and Jim drew a breath that sounded almost like a sob. 

Deep and smooth, neither fast nor slow, a little snap of the hips at the peak of each stroke, and Jim was whispering, "Yes, yes," and then Blair tried a new direction, and another with the next stroke, and again, trying for the one angle that would ... 

... and there it was, there it was, and Jim threw his head back and drew a wet gasp, and pressed even harder, back against Blair, forward against the cushion. Blair felt Jim's hips move and suddenly, fiercely wanted Jim's cock in his hand, and he wriggled his fingers, and Jim clutched his hand tightly and then understood and let go and pushed up off the couch to give Blair access. And Blair cradled Jim's slick cock in his hand and moved faster, like someone walking in the dark who finally turns onto a familiar street. Heading home. Home ... and he licked Jim's ear and growled, _"Mine"_ and pushed even deeper, and Jim's rhythm faltered, oh god, Jim was close, so close ... 

"Blair. Wait for me. Don't come yet. Wait for me ... can you? Can you?" and then it sounded as if he'd lost control of what came out of his mouth, because he couldn't stop saying it, "Can you? wait for me?" until Blair hissed in his ear: "Yes ... unh. I can do it. I can. Do it. Give it to me," and Jim let go of his tightly held control and let out a rough wail and came into Blair's hand as Blair scrunched his eyes tightly shut in an effort (don't come don't come don't come don't) to maintain his control. 

And oh, it was good to feel the spasms take him, feel Jim's pleasure in waves and then in ripples and then in long slow swells. Blair loosened his grip on Jim's cock and moved his hand off the sensitive head, but he kept stroking gently along the wet shaft, and he didn't stop moving inside Jim, either, tiny increments, just the barest nudge of his hips. And he kept on whispering in Jim's ear, low and soft, "God, come on, give me more, let it go, that's right, give it up for me ..." and Jim shuddered and gasped and went down on his elbows, face on the cushion, and Blair went still but did not withdraw. 

"Fuck," Jim said, and Blair wiped off his hand again and stroked Jim's damp face and kissed his ear and said, "Jim, why?" 

"Why what?" Jim asked. 

"Why ... wait?" Blair's hips made a little movement and then stilled quickly, but oh, it was hard not to thrust fast into that heat. He saw the corner of Jim's mouth go up. "Because I want to feel it when you come," he said. "I want to feel it all," and he slowly rolled his hips in a circle. 

"Oh ... god," and Blair was gone, control lost, chanting praises and curses in Jim's ear and moving in long, smooth strokes, and through the roar of pleasure in his ears he heard Jim murmuring, in almost the same voice he had used when he was describing what it looked like inside the glass: "Ah, god, Blair, your heartbeat, I can feel your heartbeat, I can feel it inside me, I can feel your blood inside me, feels so good, come on, you're close, come for me, come in me ..." and Blair was so immersed in pleasure that he couldn't answer, couldn't even draw a breath, couldn't do anything but obey. 

So sweet, the caressing heat, the aftershocks, and Blair's awareness slowly spread back into the rest of his body and he loosened his teeth from the back of Jim's neck and licked apologetically at a bite he didn't remember making. Jim sighed, and Blair put a hand on his hip, and Jim bore down to let him out, then slid to the floor, pulling Blair down into his arms and pressing his face into Blair's hair. 

"So good," he whispered. "Once I knew you would catch me ... so good to fall." 

"Jim." Blair pulled back far enough to look at him, though his face was indistinct in the darkness. He pressed a soft kiss to Jim's chin. "Don't you feel like you always just knew it? Knew this?" 

"I think," Jim said slowly, "that I was waiting for some kind of sign." Then he kissed Blair gently, the soft exploratory kiss that they'd been too eager to wait for the first time, and he ran his mouth lightly up Blair's cheek and around his temple and across his forehead. "Did you mean it?" he said against Blair's eyebrow. 

"Oh yeah," Blair said. "I totally meant it. This is safe, Jim, this is right, I've never been more sure." 

"Mmm." Jim was nuzzling Blair's neck now. The touch that had inflamed him before now tickled a bit in the lull of satisfaction, and Blair leaned toward Jim to get firmer contact. "But that's not what I meant," Jim said. "You said ... you said, 'mine.'" He was whispering now, and he was tensing up again. Blair ran a hand down his back and smiled. 

"Yeah," he said. "I meant that, too." And he felt Jim sigh against his neck, felt his muscles go slack again with relief, felt his mouth curve up. 

"Possessive bastard, aren't you?" 

Blair moved his hand down further, to where Jim's back curved back out into his buttocks. "You have no idea," he said. "I think this would be a good place for the tattoo, don't you?" and felt the sweet, almost-familiar sensation of Jim's laughter against his skin. 

"Hey," Jim said a few minutes later, after they had dragged down a cushion for a pillow, "what was all that about a train and a rope?" 

"Tell you later, man," Blair said sleepily. "We've got time."

**Author's Note:**

> It has been pointed out to me that I made some boneheaded errors about the stained-glass-making process. Boy, I hate it when I do that.
> 
> In addition to being my least favorite story, "Light" has the distinction of being the first one to break the hardcore barrier. I still think the sex is pretty good. And it has what I considered at the time to be the most moving line I'd ever written (or at least the one that stirred my best-friend kink the best): "He knelt up over their clasped hands and kissed his friend's mouth."
> 
> Paulette did beta duty while she was deathly ill. Please don't blame her for stuff that's the fault of the clueless author.


End file.
